Advanced Lawnmower Simulator

An Introduction

Advanced Lawnmower Simulator (or ALS) was quite simply the best game to appear on the Spectrum. It
was written by (at the time) well-known Your Sinclair writer Duncan MacDonald. In April 1990, it was
reviewed in YS and was promptly awarded a YS 'Megagame'. The following month, it was 'featured' on
the Covertape. Yes, you've guessed it - the whole thing was an elaborate April Fool's joke.

A number of months later, YS started a 'Crap Games Corner' for reader's games. Not surprisingly,
these included ALS rip-offs "Advanced Lawnmower Simulator: The Trilogy" and "Football Janitor". They
were good (actually, they were ALS with the colour and graphics commands changed a bit), but they
weren't ALS. However, it shows the popularity of the game in question.

Also, there was a cheat someone discovered for ALS: Press 'Break', and type:

130 REM 1439
RUN

This will speed the game up. (quite considerably, in fact)

Those of you having difficulty with the game, but would prefer not to cheat, may be interested in this walkthrough.

So, 6 years later, we set about producing
an Acorn version of the game. This was an instant hit, with comments ranging from "is that it? don't
you get any rabbits to run over?" to "hey, can I have a copy?"

Simon Goodwin spotted the following: The Official Playstation magazine of July 1999 had
a fax interview with then-famous band Gay Dad and asked "To
what kind of game could you see yourselves supplying the
soundtrack?" A: "A cowboy adventure game. ''Advanced Lawnmower
Simulator.'' Some spectacular space game along the lines of
Elite."